River Scar - by Paul Martin (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In his book River Scar, accomplished poet Paul Martin chronicles the coming of age in an immigrant Catholic family during the middle of the 20^th century, with the Lehigh River ever-present as witness and sometimes, accomplice. These poems are gems of stunning clarity, power, and affection.

Review Quotes

In poems of candor, power, and great love, Paul Martin offers here a genesis after an exodus: the extended American immigrant family, having left Central Europe and begun again along the Lehigh River in Eastern Pennsylvania. A chronicle shaped by pick and sledge and deep-running affections; gratitude and laughter; wound and scar, passages and passings, and all along, the constant river. River Scar is nothing less than a testament, a book of stunning psalms, everything touched by the river made sacred.

--Steve Myers, author of Memory's Dog

These poems create jewel-like moments of intense focus, capturing the small and large brutalities and passionate family loyalties of a Catholic, immigrant, working class childhood in the early and middle years of the 20th century

--Patrick Donnelly, author of Little Known Operas